One of the most poignant moments in the current (actually 20-year-old) Royal Opera House production of La Traviata comes even before the curtain rises; during the overture, images of 19th-century poverty-stricken girls are projected on it, to suggest Violetta’s origins and indeed recall the real Marie Duplessis on whom she is based. Violetta’s history before she becomes a poule de luxe is usually a conspicuous blank in the opera – she appears to have no family and never speaks of her childhood, though there are plenty of opportunities for her to do so.
I had great difficulty obtaining tickets for the performance. I was poised at the computer the moment tickets went on sale, grabbed a pair of the few remaining seats and then had an hour to pay for them before they were recycled and available for others to purchase. There must have been only seconds to spare when I finally got through to pay, owing to a bug in the site which only revealed itself when many people accessed it at once. Our seats were in the balcony, a long way round to the left so we had only a partial view of the stage.
I can see why this production keeps on coming round – it has lavish and attractive sets and costumes. (I was particularly taken with Flora’s beaded dress in Act II). They are broadly naturalistic, although something very odd has happened to the perspective in the second part of Act II; perhaps we are supposed to be seeing it through an alcoholic haze?
Diana Damrau rose to the vocal demands of the title rôle, though her gestures still had some of the old-school histrionics about them. (A hazard of international casts who are thrown together is potential inconsistency of acting styles.) She was especially impressive at projecting while facing downwards or towards the back of the stage. Francesco Demuro as Alfredo orbited around her in the required way; we thought he sounded a little shrill at times and he was definitely something of a wimp, indeed at one point quite literally a pushover. Dmitri Hvorostovsky brought the right sort of gravitas to his father, though as he was mostly on the left of the stage we didn’t see much of him. He drew a round of applause merely for walking on stage, and applause at the wrong time seemed to be a recurring problem – the abrupt shift into the cabaletta after Ah fors’è lui was obscured by another bout of it.
The orchestral playing seemed fine to me, but somehow lacklustre. This was the opinion of some of the reviewers cited below (others can be found in blogs):